A Guide to Effective Email Marketing

E-mail is one of the oldest, yet most effective communication channels in the digital world. Despite the growing popularity of social media and other forms of advertising, thanks to its flexibility, personalization, and the ability to reach the recipient directly, it remains one of the most powerful tools in the arsenal of the modern marketer.

Do you know that feeling when you come back from a long absence and find your mailbox overflowing with colorful flyers for various services that you probably aren't even interested in at the time? A horse in a row to anyone who takes all of them with them, analyzes them thoroughly, and takes advantage of the offer found this way. Someone, something? Hands up! We'd love to hear what creative things you can do with paper ads for local pizzerias and internet providers.

Postal marketing, although still regularly used by some industries, is definitely losing the battle with its successor, e-mail marketing, in at least several categories: customer targeting, execution costs and effectiveness. Although both types of campaigns have the same goal at their core, which is to promote products or services, only one of them develops relationships, loyalty and customer trust by delivering relevant, valuable and, above all, personalized content on a large scale and... at a small financial outlay.

Benefits of email marketing

Research from 2023 indicate that as many as 90% Internet users in Poland regularly use e-mail as a digital communication tool. What's more, 68% Poles have more than one email box.

What does this mean for marketers?

Well, first of all, e-mail marketing has a potentially very wide base of recipients in Poland, which makes it an effective communication channel within the marketing strategy. It would be a shame not to use such potential, especially since thanks to its flexibility and versatility, a tool such as e-mail allows you to achieve many business goals from building brand awareness, through generating sales, to maintaining long-term relationships with customers.

What other reasons are there to implement email campaigns into your marketing strategy?

• Direct communication – unlike social media, where algorithms can limit the visibility of content, email allows you to reach the recipient's inbox directly. This gives you full control over what, when, how and to whom you send it.
• Independence – when conducting e-mail marketing, you don’t have to worry about the decreasing reach of social media, the higher costs of paid advertising, changes in the regulations of social portals, their falling popularity (or even their deactivation) or algorithms that limit reach. E-mail communication is built in a way that is completely independent of large portals.
• Personalization – e-mail marketing allows you to personalize messages for different groups of subscribers or even for individual people, which means creating more engaging messages that directly address the needs and interests of users.
• Automation – modern tools enable automation of many processes, which saves time and allows you to focus on more strategic aspects of your business.
• Measuring effectiveness – Email marketing tools also offer access to statistics and analytics that provide accurate and reliable data that you can use to improve your campaigns.
• High return on investment (ROI) – in e-mail marketing it is one of the highest compared to other marketing channels. The key factors influencing such a high ROI are low campaign costs, the possibility of precise targeting and personalization of messages and direct contact with recipients. According to researches McKinsey & Company, email marketing is 40 times more effective than social media.

Building a subscriber base

Effective email marketing starts with building a solid subscriber base. This is a key element, because the quality of the mailing list directly translates into the effectiveness of the campaign. So how do you get email addresses of people interested in your brand?

• Place simple and concise registration forms in visible places on your website, blog or online store. Simple newsletter subscriptions with the promise of valuable content, discounts or updates can attract new subscribers.
• Take advantage lead magnet, i.e. offer free materials in exchange for signing up to the mailing list. These can be e-books, guides, discounts, webinars or access to exclusive content. The goal is to provide valuable content that will interest the user enough to agree to share their data in exchange for access to this offer
• Organize competitions, which require an email address to participate, offering prizes that will attract the right target group.
• Webinars, online training Whether conferences are a great opportunity to obtain email addresses from participants who are already interested in a given industry or gaining knowledge in a specific field.
• Get emails from customers who sign up online store orders. You can offer them an additional discount on their next purchase in exchange for signing up to your newsletter.

IMPORTANT!

1. Remember to always obtain informed consent for data processing by informing users about the purpose of collecting email addresses. Make sure they agree to receive marketing messages and have easy access to the privacy policy.
2. Provide the option to easily unsubscribe from the list at any time. Such information in the email will not cause you to lose customers. On the contrary, it will help you make a selection and reach a better profiled group.
3. Begin segmenting your subscriber base at the sign-up stage by asking additional questions that will help you better tailor your content to your audience’s needs. Divide your subscriber base into smaller groups based on specific criteria, such as demographics, behavior, interests, or purchase history.

Building subscriber bases and segmenting them are flexible processes that require constant control and changes, if only because a potential customer goes through subsequent stages of the sales funnel.

Email Content and the Sales Funnel

The content a user in your subscriber base receives should depend on what action they took and what stage of the sales funnel they are in. The goal is to provide valuable information and convert one-time visitors into regulars and then into customers and loyal buyers.

Stage 1. Top of the funnel

This is the moment when many people visit a website in search of desired information. At this stage, a purchase is rarely made. This is just getting to know the brand.

• To avoid losing out on a potential customer, encourage first-time visitors to provide their email address by offering some value in return (see above: sign-up forms and lead magnets).
• The email to such a group should contain valuable educational content, e.g. articles, e-books or webinars, which primarily deepen the user's knowledge about a given industry, niche or how a product you offer works.

Stage 2. Center of the funnel

You already have a list of people who visited your website or blog and left their email address. Use it to encourage the user to come back to your brand.

• The goal is to re-engage with people who have visited your site but haven’t made a purchase or inquired about your services. We want to build interest in what you offer and show how your products or services can help.
• In this phase, we deepen our relationship with subscribers by sending more personalized content, such as case studies, guides, interesting statistics, and comparative materials.

Stage 3. Bottom of the funnel

This is also known as the consideration stage. The potential customer already has regular contact with the brand but has not yet made a purchase. So you need content that will encourage them to do so.

• When a potential customer is considering a purchase, emails can act as an effective reminder of the benefits of your offer.
• Messages with discount codes, product demonstrations, abandoned carts, or customer testimonials can help you make a purchasing decision.

IMPORTANT!

Once a purchase is made, email marketing remains important. Follow-up communications, such as welcome emails, cross-selling, or loyalty programs, can encourage repeat purchases and build customer loyalty. Keeping in touch with shoppers by sending regular, valuable content helps build long-term relationships.

Email that always works

Although emails sent to individual groups at different stages of the sales funnel should be different, we can distinguish several elements that connect them and which should be paid special attention to.

• Email Subject it’s the first thing the recipient will see, so it needs to be attractive and encourage them to open the message. It should be short, concise, and at the same time arouse curiosity or promise a benefit. It’s also worth testing different approaches, such as personalization, adding an element of urgency, or using emoticons.
• Email Content should be consistent with the topic and provide the recipient with the value they expect. Regardless of the purpose of the message, it is worth remembering to clearly communicate, logically structure and use the language of benefits. Short paragraphs, bulleted lists and highlights make it easier to read and increase the chance of engaging the recipient.
• Call to Action (CTA) is a key element of any email campaign. It’s important to make it visible, specific, and compelling. Avoid generalities and use language that encourages action, such as “Check out the offer,” “Download now,” or “Get a discount.”
• Design and layout have a huge impact on the overall visual appeal of an email. Try to make your email readable on a variety of devices, especially mobile devices, as more and more users check their emails on smartphones. Responsive design, proper text formatting, and the right choice of graphics and colors are key to success.

How to measure success

The above tips are good practices on the road to success. But how do you define success in this case? To assess the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns, you should regularly monitor and analyze key metrics. Here are the most important ones:

• Open Rate – tells you what percentage of recipients opened your message. A low open rate may suggest that the email subject line wasn’t appealing enough, while a high open rate may suggest that you were very effective in attracting the recipients’ attention.

• Click-Through Rate, CTR – shows what percentage of recipients clicked on links in the email. This is an important indicator of the effectiveness of the content and CTA. A low CTR may suggest that the content was not convincing or the CTA was not visible enough.

• Unsubscribe Rate – monitors the number of people who unsubscribe from your mailing list. It allows you to understand whether your content is interesting and valuable to your recipients. An increase in the unsubscribe rate may be a signal that your campaigns are too intrusive, irrelevant, or too frequent.

• Spam Hit Rate – monitoring this indicator and following the rules for creating messages (e.g. avoiding excessive use of keywords, taking care of the quality of the mailing list) can help increase the effectiveness of the campaign.

• Conversions – the ultimate goal of many email marketing campaigns is to achieve conversion, meaning that recipients will take the desired action, such as making a purchase, signing up for a webinar, or downloading an e-book. It’s worth regularly analyzing your conversion rate to assess how well your emails translate into specific business results.

IMPORTANT!

To improve your metrics or identify the source of unsatisfactory results, you can use A/B testing, which means sending two versions of the same email and then comparing which one brings better results. You can test different elements of the message, such as the subject line, headlines, CTA, images, or content length. Regular testing can help you optimize your campaigns and increase their effectiveness.

Tool support

Conducting effective email marketing activities today is based on using the right tools designed for this purpose. There are many solutions available on the market that offer a variety of functions, from basic email sending to advanced automation and data analysis functions.

• Mailchimp – one of the most popular tools that offers a wide range of personalization and campaign automation options. It is especially friendly to small businesses and start-ups, thanks to a free version with basic functions.

• GetResponse – Polish leader in the e-mail marketing market, offering a rich set of tools, including automation, creating landing pages and webinars. It also stands out for its wide range of integrations with other systems.

• ActiveCampaign – an advanced email marketing tool that offers extensive automation and CRM features. Ideal for companies that need more advanced customer relationship management solutions.

• Brevo – a comprehensive digital marketing tool that, in addition to e-mail marketing, offers SMS marketing, marketing automation and CRM functions.

Dynamic trends

What about the future of this type of marketing? It will certainly be present in our everyday lives as long as… we use email. What will change (and has already begun to change) is the form of presenting the content of emails. More and more often, messages will contain elements?

• dynamic, which allow you to adjust the content of the message in real time depending on user data. This allows you to personalize the content to an even higher level, adapting it to, for example, location, behavior on the site or current preferences of the recipient.
• interactive, such as surveys, quizzes, and product carousels, which allow for greater user engagement without having to leave their inbox. This is a great way to increase curiosity, engagement, and click-through rates.

Bet on them in your campaign to increase the interest of the recipient and do not be afraid to experiment. It will really bring amazing results.